Living in Tasmania stories

Pioneer’s cook book highlights our bounty

This year is the 150th anniversary of Australia’s first cook book, written in Hobart by landowner and parliamentarian, Edward Abbott, and published in London in 1864.

It had the felicitous title The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many as well as for the Upper Ten Thousand by an Australian Aristologist.

A collection of gastronomic miscellany from the Old Country, the Continent and from Hebrew cookery, it included such idiosyncratic colonial recipes as Kangaroo Steamer and Slippery Bob – kangaroo brains fried in emu fat.

Only one edition was ever published.

In the 1970s, a selection of Abbott’s original material appeared under the title The Colonial Cook Book: the Recipes of a By-gone Australia, edited by Alison Burt.

On May 4 this year, a full facsimile, published by Paul County of The Culinary Historians of Tasmania, was launched to celebrate the book’s sesquicentennial anniversary at the Tasting Australia Festival in Adelaide.

While Slippery Bob understandably remained and remains an historic quirk, Abbott praised Tasmania’s striped trumpeter as one of the world’s finest eating fish. It still is, and ‘stripy’ remains a Tasmanian restaurant and household favourite to this day.

Abbott also championed locally produced wines before the infant industry eventually failed; only to re-emerge more than a century later and earn today’s wide national and international acclaim.

Abbott would be able to write a very different book today and his “Many and Upper Ten Thousand” would no doubt be delighted to witness the quite dramatic changes that have taken place in Tasmania’s culinary scene.

Evolution has accelerated in just the past two decades.

Of the 45 producers at a recent Brand Tasmania’s Meet the Producers event, only three were operating in 1980. Of the 63 products on show, only five were available at that time.

The ’80s were King Island Cheese’s time to show the country there was more to cheese than packaged Kraft cheddar slices.

At the same time, fifth-generation sheep farmer, John Bignell and others were catching fallow deer from the island’s large wild herd to lay the foundations for our farmed deer and venison industry.

In a pioneering example of farm diversification, Bignell then went on to produce the State’s first goat and sheep cheeses.

The first farmed Atlantic Salmon went to market in 1983. Today it’s a $500 million a year industry with sales growing at over $1 million a week.

The year 1989 saw the release of Tasmania’s first modern sparkling wine, Jansz, and the State is now seen as the southern hemisphere’s answer to Champagne.

In 1992, Bill Lark was freezing his butt off while trout fishing in the highlands and felt in need of a whisky. So he decided to make some.

In fact, he founded an industry.

Tasmania now has seven distilleries exporting their product globally and the Sullivans Cove Cask H 525 was judged the top single-malt in the world at London’s recent 2014 World Whisky Awards.

Tas Saff, started by Nicky and Terry Noonan with three acres of bulbs in 1991, is now the largest saffron operation in the southern hemisphere with over 50 associated growers around Australia and New Zealand.

People laughed at plans by Duncan Garvey and Peter Cooper to grow black truffles in Tasmania – until they unearthed their first truffle in July, 1999.

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Facts about Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is the southernmost state of Australia, located at latitude 40° south and longitude 144° east and separated from the continent by Bass Strait. It is a group of 334 islands, with the main island being 315 km (180 miles) from west to east and 286 km (175 miles) north to south.

Tasmania

Tasmanians are resourceful and innovative people, committed to a continually expanding export sector. In 2012–13, international exports from the state totalled $3.04 billion. USA, China, Taiwan, India, Japan and other Asian countries account for the bulk of exports, with goods and services also exported to Europe and many other regions.

Geography

Tasmania is similar in size to the Republic of Ireland or Sri Lanka. The Tasmanian islands have a combined coastline of more than 3,000 km.

Geography

The main island has a land area of 62,409 sq km (24,096 sq miles) and the minor islands, taken together, total only 6 per cent of the main island’s land area. The biggest islands are Flinders (1,374 sq km/539 sq miles), King, Cape Barren, Bruny and Macquarie Islands.

Geography

About 250km (150 miles) separates Tasmania’s main island from continental Australia. The Kent Group of Islands, one of the most northerly parts of the state, is only 55km (34 miles) from the coast of the Australian continent.

Climate

Twice named ‘Best Temperate Island in the World’ by international travel magazine Conde Nast Traveler, Tasmania has a mild, temperate maritime climate, with four distinct seasons.

Climate

In summer (December to February) the average maximum temperature is 21° Celsius (70° Fahrenheit). In winter (June to August) the average maximum is 12° C (52° F) and the average minimum is 4° C (40° F). Snow often falls in the highlands, but is rarely experienced in more settled areas.

Annual Rainfall

Tasmania’s west coast is one of the wettest places in the world, but the eastern part of the State lives in a rain-shadow. Hobart, the second-driest capital city in Australia, receives about half as much rain as Sydney.

Annual Rainfall

Annual rainfall in the west is 2,400 mm (95 inches), but hardy locals insist there is no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing. If you travel 120 km east to Hobart, you experience a much drier average of 626 mm (24 inches) a year.

Population

The 512,875-strong community spreads itself across the land; less urbanised than the population of any other Australian state. Hobart, the capital city, is home to more than 212,000 people.

Capital City

Hobart nestles at the foot of kunanyi / Mount Wellington (1,270 m / 4,000 ft) and overlooks the Derwent Estuary, where pods of dolphins and migrating whales are sometimes seen from nearby beaches. Surrounded by thickly forested rolling hills, the city is home to the state parliament and the main campus of the University of Tasmania.

Capital City

Its historic centre features Georgian and Regency buildings from colonial times. Hobart is home port for coastal fishing boats, Antarctic expeditions and vessels that fish the Southern Ocean.

Land Formation

Mountain ranges in the south-west date back 1,000 million years. Ancient sediments were deeply buried, folded and heated under enormous pressure to form schists and glistening white quartzites.

Land Formation

In the south-west and central highlands, dolerite caps many mountains, including Precipitous Bluff and Tasmania’s highest peak, Mt Ossa (1617 m / 5300 ft). More than 42 per cent of Tasmania is World Heritage Area, national park and marine or forest reserves.

Flora

Vegetation is diverse, from alpine heathlands and tall open eucalypt forests to areas of temperate rainforests and moorlands, known as buttongrass plains. Many plants are unique to Tasmania and the ancestors of some species grew on the ancient super-continent, Gondwana, before it broke up 50 million years ago.

Flora

Unique native conifers include slow-growing Huon pines, with one specimen on Mt Read estimated to be up to 10,000 years old. Lomatia tasmanica, commonly known as King’s holly, is a self-cloning shrub that may well be the oldest living organism on earth. It was discovered in 1937.

Fauna

Tasmania is the last refuge of several mammals that once roamed the Australian continent. It is the only place to see a Tasmanian devil or eastern quoll (native cat) in the wild and is the best place to see the spotted-tailed quoll (tiger cat), all carnivorous marsupials.

Fauna

The eastern bettong and the Tasmanian pademelon, both now extinct on the Australian continent, may also be observed.

Fauna

The Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, was Australia’s largest surviving carnivorous marsupial and is a modern day mystery. The last documented thylacine died in captivity in 1936 and although the animal is considered extinct, unsubstantiated sightings persist.

History and Heritage

Aboriginal people have lived in Tasmania for about 35,000 years, since well before the last Ice Age. They were isolated from the Australian continent about 12,000 years ago, when the seas rose to flood low coastal plains and form Bass Strait.

History and Heritage

Descendants of the original people are part of modern Tasmania’s predominantly Anglo-Celtic population.

History and Heritage

Tasmania was originally named Van Dieman’s Land by the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman in 1642. The island was settled by the British as a penal colony in 1803 and the original name was associated with the convict era. It was changed to Tasmania when convict transportation stopped in 1853.

Economy

A resourceful island culture has generated leading-edge niche industries, from production of high-speed catamaran ferries and marine equipment to lightning-protection technology.

Economy

The Wooden Boat Centre at Shipwrights Point has re-established the skills and traditions of another age and attracts students from around the world.

Economy

Tasmania is a world leader in natural turf systems for major sporting arenas and in areas of mining technology and environmental management. Its aquaculture industry has developed ground-breaking fish-feeding technology and new packaging.

Economy

Tasmanians sell communications equipment to many navies and their world-class fine timber designers and craftsmen take orders internationally for furniture made from distinctive local timber.

Economy

The state is a natural larder with clean air, unpolluted water and rich soils inviting the production of 100 varieties of specialty cheeses, as well as other dairy products, mouth-watering rock lobsters, oysters, scallops and abalone, Atlantic salmon, beef, premium beers, leatherwood honey, mineral waters, fine chocolates, fresh berry fruits, apples and crisp vegetables.

Economy

Tasmania is a producer of award-winning cool-climate wines, beers, ciders and whiskies. Other export products include essential oils such as lavender, pharmaceutical products and premium wool sought after in Europe and Asia. Hobart is a vital gateway to the Antarctic and a centre for Southern Ocean and polar research.

Economy

The industries in Tasmania which made the greatest contribution to the State’s gross product in 2010–11 in volume terms were: Manufacturing (9.4%), Health care and social assistance (8.2%), Financial and insurance services (7.2%), Ownership of dwellings and Agriculture, forestry and fishing (each 7.1%).

Getting to Tasmania

Travel is easy, whether by air from Sydney or Melbourne, or by sea, with daily sailings of the twin ferries Spirit of Tasmania 1 and 2 each way between Melbourne and Devonport throughout the year.